Statistics - My aim is to investigate whether it is possible to gain information about authorship of a text by using statistical measures.

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Introduction

Kuljit Bahra AS Maths Coursework 10/03/2003

Statistics Coursework – Authorship

Design

Aim

My aim is to investigate whether it is possible to gain information about authorship of a text by using statistical measures. I will investigate the authorship of an Adult text and a Child text. I will calculate the mean of the distribution for both populations. From this, I will calculate the standard deviation and variance. I will use the unbiased estimator for both populations. I will calculate the standard error and confidence intervals for both populations. I will represent my data using frequency distribution tables. I will put my results into a frequency distribution graph. For the confidence intervals, I will use normal distribution diagrams.

Hypothesis

I predict that there will be more letters per word in Great Expectations by Charles Dickens and fewer in Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator by Roald Dahl. Therefore, the mean in Great Expectations will also be larger. I expect Great Expectations to have a larger standard deviation because of the use of a larger vocabulary.

Population

I will randomly select 50 pages from each book by using the RAND function in Microsoft Excel. Once I have 50 random pages for each book, I will select a random line for each page. I will finally select a random word from each line.

Communication

Limitations

One major limitation was the amount of samples that I collected. If I had collected more samples my data would have increased in accuracy. Because of the time allowed to complete the investigation collecting 50 samples from both the books seemed sensible. If I were to repeat the investigation I would increase the number of samples that I collected because this would increase the accuracy of my experiment.

Extensions

To extend the investigation I could have looked at the number of words per line. I could have looked at the number of words per page. I could have also looked at the number of paragraphs per page.

Improvements

To improve the investigation, I could have collected more results. This would lead to the sample mean being more similar to the population mean.

I could have also collected different types of results. I could have looked at the number of words per page.

Conclusion

In conclusion, my results show that it is possible to gain information about authorship of a text using statistical measures. My results show this because the adult text has a higher average of letters per word and also has more variation of word length. More information could be gained by collecting a larger sample size.

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